Pentecost 3                                         Luke 7:36-8:3                                            6/17/07
                                                            "Sin Boldly"
 
Today’s sermon should be a delight for just about everyone here. I am about to encourage you and teach you to "Sin Boldly". Yes, you read it right. Yes, you heard me right. I want you to sin boldly.

The extreme moralists who believe you should scourge yourself six times a day to right the wrong of your sinfulness should go home.

The theological relativists who live to find sneaky ways to rationalize or cover up their sinfulness should go to Washington.

The rest should stay put and listen carefully. Today, we hand out "get out of jail free" cards to everyone who is willing to sin boldly...and the cards are good for life.

Yes, you can live a totally immoral, unabashedly sinful life, and not worry one little bit. You can earn the worst reputation in town and even get your name in the news more than Paris, or the CEO of Enron without concern for your immortal soul. In fact, not only do I invite you to be openly sinful, I urge you to act out just as the woman in our Gospel did.

Now, the Pharisee wasn’t shocked by this unnamed sinner just because she touched ritually impure Roman money like the despised tax collectors. He didn’t condemn her just because she lived off of ill gotten gains. The pharisee and everyone else in the town new that this woman violated all the laws of decency.

Furthermore, some might say that even what she was doing in washing Jesus’ feet was unforgivably intimate and indecent. The way she conducted herself could easily be seen as seductive.

The pharisee rightly believes Jesus can be judged by His reaction to this woman. If, He is a prophet from God, He will know what kind of person she is and loudly call her to account.

But, Jesus doesn’t shame her. He doesn’t curse her for making Him unclean. He doesn’t even recoil from her sinful touch.

Instead, Jesus presents Simon, the super-righteous pharisee, with a parable. He has Simon judge which debtor will love the forgiving moneylender more. If the moral of the story isn’t clear enough, Jesus goes on to spell it out for Simon with the real life example of his host’s failure to provide water for his guest to wash his feet on arrival, and other failures of hospitality.

Then, comes perhaps the most important verse in the lesson, "Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven - for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little." This is followed by Jesus’ statement of forgiveness to the woman, lest anyone, including she, doubt her status or his.

We don’t know, of course what came before this recorded encounter between Jesus and the woman. Implied in the story is something that led to her act of love, for Jesus clearly interprets what she does as being responsive to a prior word of forgiveness.

We also don’t know what she did or how she lived after this scene. We do know that even if she stopped committing the sins that brought such notoriety, she continued to sin in other ways, because she was a sinful human being, just like the pharisee...just like us.

We can also see that something else is absent. Not only does Jesus not condemn her for past sins, He doesn’t say, "Go, and sin no more." Instead, He says, "Go in peace."

What a lesson Jesus has offered Simon! What a lesson Jesus offers us! The key to peace is to sin boldly. And if you doubt it, read vs. 47 again - "...he who has been forgiven will love little." Thus, if you sin boldly, you experience more forgiveness and that experience of deep, expansive forgiveness leads to peace.

Okay, now here is the rub. (You knew there had to be one, right?) To sin boldly is not so much a matter of what we do as it is our attitude about it. The woman experienced a greater depth of forgiveness not because her sins were so awful - remember all sins are equal to God - but because she faced the awfulness of her sin. In facing her utter sinfulness, the words of forgiveness had much greater meaning to her.

Simon, the righteous, law-abiding, faithful church goer saw only little piddly sins, minor infractions. He was a good man and he knew it. And this was his greatest error. By focusing on the law and his adherence to it, Simon failed to grasp the awfulness of his sinful nature. He was a sinner - no matter how good he seemed outwardly - and what he needed was to face that fact. Then, he too could experience the depth of forgiveness and love the woman felt. Then, he too could go in peace.

I suspect that Simon, the pharisee, had the same problem that a lot of Christians I’ve known - even good Lutherans - have. I think that up until now, Simon was living a lie.

He had learned the law well. He tried sincerely to follow the law and resist sin, but he knew that no matter how hard he tried, he was a failure. In fact, his knowledge of the law and his efforts to be good made him feel even greater shame over his sinfulness. And the more shame he felt, the more he had to cover up his sins to the point where he no longer consciously recognized how bad he was.

We still do that today. I think buried beneath all the judgments Christians make of the sins of others is an unrecognized sense of shame because they continue to miss the mark (the definition of sin) and fail to be as good as they wrongly think God demands that they be.

Martin Luther had the cure for this. It was "Sin boldly". In a letter to Phillip Melancthon from his exile in the Wartburg castle, Luther wrote,

Be a sinner, and sin boldly, but let
your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we
are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We,
however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new
heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that
through God's glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the
sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to
kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think
such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager
sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.

And if Luther’s word isn’t enough, hear again the word of God, "Your sins are forgiven. Your faith (in these words) has saved you; go in peace." Amen